Re: Further Evolution beyond the Human? (Sardonic Diatribe)
David L Evens (devens@uoguelph.ca)
10 Oct 1996 22:43:21 GMT
Theodore A. Holden (medved@access.digex.net) wrote:
: Adam Price <ami@gladstone.uoregon.edu> wrote:
: >As long as we have Darwin in stocks for creating evolution, I would like
: >to get some thing off of my chest about Mr. Newton. It is because of
: >that blasphemer that we are all landlocked. If not for his evil
: >discovery, gravity, we would not be condemned to spend all our lives
: >watching birds from below and dropping our toothpaste into the toilet.
: >Speaking of toilets, if it wasn't for Thomas Crapper, I would not have
: >to go to the bathroom right now.
: >....
: There are two gigantic differences which squash the rather primitive
: analogy which you are trying to make.
: One is that Newton discovered a real fact of the natural world and did a fairly
: reasonable job of describing it for his day. Darwin did not. His thesis (that
: the kinds of microevolutionary change which we observe in a schnauzer
: being bred into a terrier or a finch with one sort of beak changing into a
: finch with another kind of beak can explain the rise of all of our present
: lifeforms from the most simple to the most complex) was known by breeders
: to be fatally flawed when it was proposed and has been blown apart by several
: excellent books which have been published in the last 10 years or so.
: Michael Behe's "Darwin's Black Box" and Alexander Mebane's "Darwin's
: Creation Myth" would do for starters.
No, they are clearly not the 'excelent books' you pretend exist.
: The other difference is that nothing in Newton's description of gravity could
: be said to have caused any marked worsening of human conduct. Darwin's
: theory has done that and the outcome was altogether predictable. Certainly
: there were villians, blackguards, hoodlums, neerdowells and whatnot before
: Darwin, but they always felt BAD about it. Those people went to bed every
: night thinking "Gee, you know, I really am an asshole, and I probably ought to
: try to do something about it..." Their conduct and the harm they caused was
: thus kept within limits and, occasionally, one of them would mend his ways
: altogether or, as in the case of Andrew Carnegie, leave all of his money to
: worthy and just causes.
Accoridng to you, he did not, as he did, amoungst other things, set up a
university where REALITY (as opposed to religions idiocy) is studied.
: Darwin walked into the picture and told every one of those types, all over
: the world, that the <survival of the fittest> was the only moral law in
: nature, i.e. that they could feel GOOD about being assholes. The results
: are obvious in any reading of the history of this century.
Yes, we have religious idiots like yourself commiting genocide...oops, we
had that all along.
--
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Ring around the neutron, | "OK, so he's not terribly fearsome.
A pocket full of positrons,| But he certainly took us by surprise!"
A fission, a fusion, +--------------------------------------------------
We all fall down! | "Was anybody in the Maquis working for me?"
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"I'd cut down ever Law in England to get at the Devil!"
"And what man could stand up in the wind that would blow once you'd cut
down all the laws?"
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